Opertion Northwoods - Justification for US Military Intervention in Cuba

This document, titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba” was provided by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on March 13, 1962, as the key component of Operation Northwoods.

Written in response to a request from the Chief of the Cuba Project, Col. Edward Lansdale, the Top Secret memorandum describes U.S. plans to covertly engineer various pretexts that would justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba.

These proposals - part of a secret anti-Castro program known as Operation Mongoose - included staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United States, developing a fake “Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,” including “sink[ing] a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or simulated),” faking a Cuban airforce attack on a civilian jetliner, and concocting a “Remember the Maine” incident by blowing up a U.S. ship in Cuban waters and then blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage.

Author James Bamford writes that Operation Northwoods “may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government.”

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf